Dobby: Arriving at Hogwarts
by Michael M
Summary: The Story of Dobby: What more could you want?
1. A Newfound Freedom

Dobby ran down the halfway with the sock in hand. He was free of the Malfoys! What could be a better present! Dobby knew he could never truly repay Harry Potter, but he would have to try, because giving him freedom was the best gift he had every received.  
  
Dobby ran through the halls, looking for somewhere he could rest or hide, a bit afraid that Master Malfoy may force Dobby to rejoin his staff. Even though that was forbidden in the wizarding world, Dobby didn't put anything past Master Malfoy, as he had proven himself to be a horrible man with no respect for the rules, at least during the time Dobby worked for him.  
  
Dobby decided to put his sock on, thinking that it could help warm his body, and wanting to keep his memento of his freedom close by. Several Hogwarts students he passed by gave him a funny look, probably due to his strange, one-socked look, and also due to the fact that they were used to never seeing a House Elf, at least never seeing a good one. Dobby, however, didn't care, as he was free to do what he wanted! He was a free House Elf, and was going to change the way things had worked, at least for him, as he was tired of being a slave.  
  
Dobby, drunk on his own freedom, hardly noticed he cut in front of Professor Snape, who he knew fairly little of anyways. The professor, enraged that a House Elf would dare to step in front of a human, even worse, a professor, pulled his foot back to kick poor Dobby in the head. However, surrounded by students, he decided it would be better to wait until he was alone. He knew he already had a horrible reputation with most of the students without kicking a defenseless creature in the hallways, no matter how disrespectful it had been. Snape tapped Dobby on the shoulder, leaning down low the ground.  
  
Dobby turned, surprised, and came face to face with Snape's giant nose, which Snape had stuck only centimeters away from Dobby's face. Standing back up, Snape looked down his nose at Dobby, and began to rant, "You stupid elf, you know better than to step in front of a human. What are you doing in the halls, anyways? Didn't you learn to hide from the public view? Get back to work, you pitiful wretch."  
  
Now fully enraged, Snape looked around him, and, satisfied that he was well enough alone, gave Dobby a hard kick in the back, making a dark foot mark on his pillow case. Dobby, not knowing what to do, ran into a nearby closet, and heard Snape follow him. Scared still, Dobby cowered in a corner as the door opened, Snape now livid.  
  
"GET...TO...WORK!" Snape screamed, and threw Dobby out of the closet. Slamming into a nearby wall, Dobby looked to get away, finding the only nearby exit being a small grate. Prying the lid off quickly, Dobby dove into the unknown area beyond the grate without giving it a second thought.   
  
He knew now what he had to do. Dobby had to find Albus Dumbledore and talk to him about Snape, and perhaps weasel a second sock out of the headmaster. Dobby had heard, from Harry, only good things about Dumbledore. He knew that if anyone could help him, it would be the headmaster. Dobby peered into the pathway ahead of him, realizing that he was now in an air duct. Crawling forward, Dobby began a long trek through the dark.  



	2. In the Air Ducts

Dobby crawled through the duct. He hadn't even been aware that Hogwarts had air ducts for heating, as he had assumed that yet another magic spell was used to warm the castle. Even though his assumption was wrong, he was happy that they existed. He knew if they weren't there, he might have been dead that very second.  
  
Dobby continued on through the dark air ducts for what seemed like hours. The strange part about these ducts was, as Dobby realized, that they had no vents that he could find. He figured that, at some interval along the way, the ducts would at least have ventilation grates into rooms or hallways, but the ducts were consistently dark, and nowhere along his way did Dobby find a grate. While this meant he couldn't be caught, it also meant he would have to go all the way back to where he entered the ducts to get out. He stopped for several seconds to pray for an opening soon, as he wasn't very accustom to the dark, and, frankly, it scared him.  
  
Dobby remembered back to the last time he had been surrounded by total darkness. It had been some time since then, what seemed like ages ago when he was working for the Malfoys. Master Malfoy had left the house for some time, and Dobby had forgotten to warm his bed before he returned, an act that Master Malfoy had requested from the first day of Dobby's working at the Malfoy home. Dobby had punished himself severely for that, slamming his head on each stair of the basement steps, and starving himself for several days while forcing himself to sleep in the dank basement where the Malfoy's hid all their secret bewitched furniture and appliances. Dobby had spent a lot of time exploring the rooms in the basement, and had been more terrified by what he saw than the darkness itself. Luckily for him, it was slighly light in the basement when he explored, as the lights from upstairs still crept down the steps into the basement until all the Malfoys went to bed. But, when the lights were turned off, Dobby found himself in a pitch black land he hardly knew and could not find his way around, and it had, for the most part, scarred him for life.  
  
Dobby looked behind him and saw, far in the distance, a small square of light, obviously the spot where he had entered the ducts so long ago. It alarmed him that the ducts were so straight. It seemed to him that the school was hardly this long, and there was no way that he was still climbing within its walls. Scared about where he was crawling, Dobby tried to peel the air duct connection below him apart, slowly but surely bending the metal up until he could see out. What he saw alarmed him.  
  
It took him a second to recognize what he was viewing, but it looked like the night sky, yet it was strangely unreal, as if the stars were painted into space, and not actually real. Dobby pulled the metal back farther, and look farther out the duct. What he saw almost made him scream.  
  
The dining hall lay what seemed to be miles below the duct. What Dobby had seen as paint-like stars were actually the bewitched ceiling decorations the teachers at Hogwarts put up to entertain the students while they ate. Dobby was terribly scared, as, now that he knew how far he could fall, the ducts seemed terribly weak. Dobby began to crawl ahead as quickly as he could, covering meter after meter in seconds.  
  
Dobby's little legs allowed him to speed a bit faster than a human would in the ducts, as he could stand up, in some sense of the term. By bending over painfully, he could literally run through the ducts, ducking his head out of habit, as he wanted least of all to get bashed on the head by some obtruding object and die days later, unconcious on the floor of the ducts, never to be found. Doby ran and ran until he hit a loose panel, and fell through the floor, screaming loudly, expecting to be flattened seconds later on the floor far below.  
  



	3. Waiting for a Friend

Dobby squeezed his eyes shut and screamed as he fell from the broken air duct, his arms flailing for something to grab onto. To his suprise, something hard was within reach, and he got a good grip on it before he dared to open his eyes.  
  
Dobby found himself hanging off a short bookcase that was only several feet off the ground. In the far corner of the room from where he was hanging, a golden and red bird fumbled frightened on its perch, feathers twittering terribly. Dobby's recent scream must have scared it greatly, as it took several minutes for it to calm down.  
  
Dobby dropped off the bookcase and looked up at the ceiling where he had fallen. There was no hole, and, to add more confusion to the situation, there was no air duct at all. Dobby forced himself to turn his head away, explaining it to himself as a wonder of magic, something he'd learned to deal with long ago. Dobby was still a bit chilled by the fact that he had no way to backtrack out of the room, nor could he claim how he entered.  
  
Dobby dusted himself off, his knees covered in dust and grime, but luckily his pillow case, which covered his torso and halfway down his thighs, was only slightly dingy. Dobby's hands were covered with even more grime than his knees, including thick spiders webs and a thick layer of dirt that formed crusts beneath his fingernails and found its way into ever crease of Dobby's hands. He cleaned them the best he could, but, not wanting to dirty his mostly clean pillow case, he was not able to get them adequately dirt-free.  
  
Looking around the room, Dobby studied the pictures on the walls. Each frame contained an elderly lady or gentleman, each with their own expression, most grinning, but a few giving off dark scowls. Dobby looked at each picture in turn, and, at the very end, stood a portrait of a man Dobby could recognize! Grinning widely through his long beard and his great wizarding cap, Dumbledore was the last one in the, now obvious list of past headmasters. Dobby realized that he had found his way to where he initially wanted to go!  
  
Dobby found his way to Dumbledore's desk, thinking to sit atop it so he could be the first think Dumbledore saw when he entered the room. Waiting and waiting, Dobby finally layed back on some soft papers, and fell into a deep and deserved sleep. 


End file.
